


Shiva

by 852_Prospect_Archivist



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: Drama, M/M, other pairing - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-10
Updated: 2013-05-10
Packaged: 2017-12-11 09:55:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/796986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/852_Prospect_Archivist/pseuds/852_Prospect_Archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A new serial killer has set up shop in Cascade. It's a good thing Blair<br/>reads fan fiction.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shiva

## Shiva

#### by Nemesis

Author's website: [http://www.geocities.com/rogue_world/ ](http://www.geocities.com/rogue_world/)  
They're not mine, and they're never going to me. I get nothing out of this except the pleasure of making my readers squirm.   
  
Thank you to the people at Senbetas for fixing all my little oops. Also, please read Tribal Lore BEFORE you read this fic, or you will be confused.   
  
Contains refrences to Cypher and Rogue. Also, this story may be disturbing to some readers, but no major character death this time.  
This story is a sequel to: Tribal Lore

* * *

"Sit down, Blair." Simon was chewing on a cigar, which made Blair a little nervous, considering the man had quit six months ago. 

"I'm not sure it's safe, sir. You've got that nicotine-deprived look in your eyes." 

"Sit." The word, while softly spoken, wasn't an offer. "We need to talk." 

"If this is about the cows in booking-" 

"Let's not talk about the cows. I have bigger problems than the cows." You'd think, by now, he'd be used to the insanity that surrounded Jim and Blair, but the cows had still been a shock. "You need to get out of town for a while." 

"Don't tell me the Koreans actually put that hit out on me." Cows and angry street gangs. It had been a very bad week. 

"It's not the Koreans either. It's the Commissioner. He almost forgets about you, then cows show up in booking and it occurs to him that two of his detectives are living together and have some mystical supernatural bond. It makes him nervous. It makes him want to get you off the street and out of his hair. So, my plan is to get you out of Cascade long enough that Williams forgets there's a shaman on the payroll." 

"How long?" A week, maybe two, and Jim would be fine. Even if they sent him to Seattle, he could come home on the weekends. 

"Six weeks, minimum." 

"Simon, I can't go away for six weeks!" Their esteemed Captain had obviously lost his mind. "Your secret weapon would end up a vegetable." 

"You have to go. The word upstairs is there's a research position open in Olympia and it's all yours. I have to get you out of here for a while, Sandburg. Just until Commissioner Williams cools off." Simon knew that if he lost Blair, he lost Jim. Only, in Jim's case, the loss would be permanent because living as a Sentinel without a Guide was a lot like walking blindfolded into a NASCAR race. 

"Okay, okay. This can work. Seattle isn't that far. If Jim takes some vacation time-" 

"You're not going to Seattle." 

"I'm not?" Why, oh why did Blair suddenly have a very bad feeling about this? 

"No." Simon leaned back in his chair. "You're going to Syracuse." 

"Syracuse. Syracuse...." Blair tried to remember where the hell Syracuse was. `Orange Men, Carrier Dome. Wait a second-' No, no, Simon must have misspoken. "Simon, tell me you don't mean the Syracuse that's in Upstate New York." 

"Technically, it's Central New York." Oh, he was having way too much fun with this, given the situation. He just couldn't help himself. 

"Simon, no. You can't send me that far away. Not for six weeks." As far as Blair knew, abandoning your Sentinel was a big no-no. 

"I have to, or you'll be sitting behind a desk within the month." 

Blair let his head hit the desk. "Fuck. How am I gonna tell Jim?" 

* * *

"Hey, you listening to me?" 

"Mhm." 

"Listening to me, or to things only you can hear?" 

Jim, whose head was resting on Blair's thigh, just smiled. "More of the second thing." 

"That's what I thought." He stroked Jim's hair a few times and he could almost hear purring. "Why don't you come back up here?" 

"I figured if I stayed down here long enough, you'd let me do it again." The smile on Jim's face was more than a little feral. "Unless you have a better offer. You put a man on short rations for two weeks and he gets a little greedy afterwards." 

"We've been busy. However, I seem to recall you describing exactly what you wanted to do to me when we got more than ten minutes to ourselves. After all that talk, you really need to come up here and fuck me." 

"Good idea." Jim slid up with a catlike grace. "So, how, exactly did you convince Simon to give us a day off? How many hours of playing Officer Friendly is this gonna cost me?" 

"None. He sort of insisted we take today off." 

Jim's wandering hands froze. "What insane mission does he have for us now?" 

"It's not an insane mission and it's not exactly for us." He could feel the sudden change in Jim's mood. "You know, keeping everything in like this can't be good for your blood pressure." 

"Fuck my blood pressure. Damn it, I though Simon understood." They were not to be separated. He'd even gone as far as to tell the story of Pope the last time someone had tried to borrow Sandburg. "What does Seattle want you to do this time? Translate someone's love letters again?" 

"I'm not going to Seattle. They want me to do a study on John Jimelski." 

"Who on earth is John Jimelski?" 

"He's a serial rapist who kept his victims for weeks, sometimes even months. This could be the break we need to catch Shiva." 

"The Shiva killings aren't sexual." There was that ache behind his right eye again. He'd decided to call it Sandburg. "Besides, I've never even heard of this guy. How many-" 

"Eight women, Jim. The only reason you've never heard of him is he isn't exactly local." 

Not local? "How not local?" 

"New York." Blair felt Jim's hands tighten on his hips. "I have to go. Between Washington and California, Shiva has killed twenty men and in a few weeks it'll be twenty two. Do you have any idea how rare it is to find a serial killer who holds their victims for weeks? This Jimelski guy could be our only insight into catching Shiva." 

"The Shiva killings aren't sexual! The Governor's so desperate he's sending you on a wild goose chase!" Now the pain was behind both eyes. 

"You don't know that. If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times. The Shiva killings MUST be sexual." 

"Blair..." 

"I'm in charge here, remember?" Jim snorted and Blair elbowed him. "Shut up. I have to go, and not just because of Shiva. We have a big problem and its name is Commissioner Williams." 

* * *

Everyone was avoiding him like he had the plague and Sandburg had only been gone two weeks. Jim resisted the urge to growl. Most of the people here now hadn't known him before Sandburg had come into his life. They thought he was bad now? They had no idea how miserable he was capable of being, but they'd find out. Oh, they'd find out. 

Simon, who had known Jim years ago when he was this big a prick all the time, had tried to steer clear and let Jim stew, but that wasn't an option anymore. He needed his best team on this, and the half he really wanted was on the other side of the country so he'd have to make do with Jim. "Alright, everybody. We've got two more Shiva victims coming in." 

Great, just what he needed. Two more dead men and no Sandburg to help him do the forensics. After six cycles of Shiva killings, Jim had the routine down pat. Two men disappeared and six weeks later their mutilated bodies turned up in the parking lot of one of the area Walmarts. The only question was how long the drive to the dump site was. "Which Walmart?" 

"No Walmart this time. We have two live victims being brought in." Silence descended on the bullpen and Simon continued. "The night manager of the McDonalds on Cogswell found them when he was taking out the garbage. They've refused hospitalization and they're ready to give their statements. Ellison, my office." 

Jim, pausing just long enough to miss the brains of this operation, went to see what the hell was going on. "Are we sure this is the real deal? These guys could be faking it." 

"Jim, not even in Cascade do people electrocute themselves for fun. Well, maybe they do, but they don't carve the Hindu symbol for Shiva into their skin afterwards. We didn't release that tidbit to the press." 

"I'll interview them for you but your expert is currently in some prison in Central New York, doing a useless study, because the Shiva cases aren't sexual. They would be handing these guys over to SVU if they were." 

"Just go do your job." Simon pointed to the door. "I should have sent _you_ to New York." 

* * *

The two men had been seated next to each other and given some clothes. The short sleeved shirts didn't do much to hide the bandages on their arms and nothing could hide the smell from Jim's nose. They were still bleeding somewhere. This interview should be happening in an emergency room, but you can't force two stubborn men to go to the hospital, so they'd been treated and released. 

Jim looked them over before he stepped into the room. They looked like all the other Shiva victims, right down to the mark of Shiva on their forearms the EMTs had been so careful to cover up. He opened the door. "Gentlemen. I'm Detective Ellison." 

"Mark Kirch." The man to the right spoke first. "My quiet friend is Ethan Lancaster." 

"Can he talk?" 

"What's that supposed to mean?" Mark's posture changed and Jim recognized the pose. This guy blamed himself. This was Blessed Protector Syndrome in full force. 

"I was a medic in the Army. I've seen men in this shape before. It's called shock. So, _can_ he talk?" Mark relaxed and Jim once again wished for Blair. 

"I can talk. I'll tell you anything you want." Ethan's voice was gravelly. He had strangulation marks on his neck. "I want that bitch to rot for what she did to me." 

"She?" 

Ethan laughed and it was a harsh, rough sound. Jim had to wonder the last time he'd laughed. "Haven't they told you anything? This Shiva? You're looking for a woman." 

Jim reached for his notepad. "Can you describe her?" 

"When we met, she was a blond with green eyes. Today, she was a red head and her eyes were the color of coal." Ethan took the notepad from Jim's hands. "I'll draw her for you." 

"She kept changing her looks." Mark absently pushed a pencil in Ethan's direction, as if it was something he'd done a thousand times before. "Every week, she was someone different." 

"No, she just looked different." Ethan's fingers flew across the paper and Jim could see these were no rough sketches. They were detailed, almost portraits. "She was always the same. She always wanted to hurt me." 

"Did she focus on you?" 

"Not all the time, but a lot. She liked to make Mark watch. I'm an industrial design artist. Mark lifts heavy things for a living. Who would you try to break?" Ethan's pencil snapped and he stared at it as if he didn't understand what had happened. "She didn't break my fingers. The bodies always turned up with broken fingers. I guess I should be grateful." 

This woman - and what a surprise that was - had killed twenty men. Why let these two live? "Do you have any idea why she let you go?" 

"Shiva said we were liars and she was the destroyer of lies." Mark reached over and took the pieces of pencil from Ethan's hands. "Trade?" Ethan nodded mutely and took the pencil. He tore a page out of Jim's notebook and started another picture. Mark did his best not to look at it. "Today, she made us shower and cuffed us together. The papers said... I was sure we were going to die, but when she left us in that alley, she told us we deserved to live. That's it. We deserved to live." 

"Did she say anything, ask you to do anything?" 

"No, all she ever did was hurt us." Mark touched his ribs, and Jim wondered if they were broken. "She put electrodes on us. She whipped us. She cut off our water for three days once, but she never told us what she wanted." 

Jim listened with a growing sense of wrongness. They weren't telling him something. " _Nothing_ unusual happened the past few days?" 

Mark looked Jim straight in the eye, and lied. "No. Nothing." 

And just when Jim thought it couldn't get any worse, Shiva delivered him two uncooperative victims. 

* * *

"Tell me about Syracuse." Jim didn't even bother with hello. 

"The weather is bi-polar, the football team sucks, and they eat white hot dogs." Blair kicked off his shoes and sank into a recliner. "But they've got me staying at the Marx, which isn't too bad. How was your day?" He popped an M&M into his mouth. 

"Shiva let her last victims go." Jim could hear choking on the other end of the line. "You okay over there?" 

Blair spat out a piece of peanut and tried to breathe. "Jim Ellison, do not fuck with me." 

"I'm not. I wish I was, but I'm not. Shiva is a woman and today, she let Mark Kirch and Ethan Lancaster go." 

"This changes everything. If we're looking for a woman, my whole profile is wrong." Blair kicked the desk and watched his notes scatter everywhere. "What the hell am I doing here?" 

"No, you're not wrong. These guys lied to me, Chief. Shiva is a woman. There wouldn't be any overt signs of sexual abuse. She did something to them, something they won't talk about." 

"As fascinatingly sickening as Jimelski is, he's probably not going to be able to give us much insight into the female serial killer's mind. You have to get Simon to let me come home." 

"I'll do my best." 

"So." Blair loosened his tie and opened his slacks. "What are you wearing?" 

* * *

"You know what your problem is, Jim? You need to get laid." 

"Henri Brown, if you say one more word about my sex life, I will break every bone in your body. You will regret the day you were ever born." 

Henri took a step back and held his hands up. "Just making an observation." 

Jim brushed past him and headed for the elevator. He had uncooperative witnesses to spy on. 

"I can't wait till Sandburg gets back and Ellison turns into a human being again." 

"I heard that!" 

* * *

Mark and Ethan had refused to be admitted to the hospital, but they had gone to see a doctor. They would have been crazy not to. Like most of Shiva's victims, they were roommates, so Jim got a sandwich and parked himself on a bench outside their apartment for a little illegal observation. 

"Will you sit still?" 

"Maybe if you weren't tearing all the hair off my body inch by inch, I could sit still, but I can't." Mark had his shirt off and Ethan was pulling off his bandages. "Can't we soak them off or something?" 

"I'm not up for flooding the bathroom tonight. Christ, these look worse than before." Ethan picked up one of the burn cream tubes and squinted at the label before just guessing and squeezing about half the tube on Mark's back. "I've been thinking about the cop." 

"Are we back to this again? We are not telling the cop. That's not why she let us go. People do not let you live for that." 

"What if we're wrong?" 

"Then we still don't tell him. Have you seen that guy?" 

"I think I'm done." Ethan wiped his hands off. "Do you think it'll scar?" 

"I'm not planning on being naked in front of another woman anytime soon. Are you?" 

* * *

"She did something to them. Mark said he wasn't planning on being naked in front of _another_ woman anytime soon. I've seen a lot of torture victims, a lot of rape victims. These guys, they're not acting like either." 

"At least you're talking to somewhat sane people. This guy, he honestly doesn't believe he's done anything wrong. He thinks he purchased prostitutes." 

"Prostitutes? Didn't he grab those women off the street?" 

"Mhm." Blair stopped the tape of the interview he'd been watching. "Okay, try this on for size. Two guys go out cruising together. They meet this beautiful woman, she buys them both a drink, slips them a roofie. She drags them back to her lair and proceeds to do whatever she wants to them." 

"Sounds plausible." Jim closed his eyes and listened to Blair talk. 

"You said she used electricity. Where?" 

"Their chests, their legs. Pretty standard stuff." 

"Not if we were really dealing with a sadist. If she was getting off on the violence, you would have found some signs of genital mutilation. No, something else is going on here. They'll talk, eventually. You just have to keep listening." 

"Listening to people is your job." 

"Well, then, congratulations on your promotion." 

* * *

Observation Log, Wednesday 

"No." 

"You're being unreasonable." 

"There's no reason to tell the cop. This has nothing to do with Shiva!" 

"You say that, but you don't believe it. You think it was just a coincidence she let us go the next day?" 

"Yes!" 

* * *

Observation Log, Sunday 

"Look, do you want this woman caught?" 

"Of course." 

"Well, so do I and I'd like to keep the big burly cop eager to help us. So we just keep out mouths shuts." 

"I'm so fucking tired." 

"Did you take your pills?" 

"No." 

"Take your pills and get some sleep." 

"You know, the ad I ran in the paper was for a roommate, not a keeper." 

"You wanted a roommate. You needed a keeper. Now take the damn pills." 

"I still think we should tell him." 

{sound of a pillow hitting wall} 

* * *

Simon shoved a shot glass under Jim's nose. "Drink that. You look like you need it." 

"I do." Jim did the shot, hoping it would help his ever growing sense of insomnia. Sentinels who'd been sharing their Guide's bed for several years didn't sleep well alone. "These guys, they have the same argument over and over. Ethan wants to tell me what happened, Mark keeps talking him out of it. I'm waiting for Mark to strangle Ethan or Ethan to convince Mark to tell me. Either works for me. Today, though, they weren't fighting. All I could hear was breathing." 

Simon started flipping through the transcripts Jim had written. "They argue like you and Blair do." 

"They do, don't they?" The fog began to lift in Jim's brain. "I have an idea." After two weeks of not seeing the forest for the trees, he'd finally figured it out. 

* * *

Blair dropped his umbrella and threw his soggy notebook onto the desk. "God, I hate this place." 

The light was blinking on the phone and he sat down to check his messages. There was only one, from Jim. 

"Guess your liaison took you out to dinner or something. I figured out why Kirch and Lancaster are being so uncooperative. Do you remember... of course you remember Lash and I bet you remember what happened afterwards." There was a quiet chuckle. "I know I never forgot. Anyway, I know what happened to Mark and Ethan. Call me when you get in." 

* * *

"I've already told you all I can." Mark Kirch looked like a man who hadn't slept very well in a long time. "We don't know who she is, why she let us go, or where we were." 

"This isn't about Shiva. I want to know why you didn't think it was important to tell me that you're boinking your roommate." The minute the word boinking left Jim's mouth, he knew he'd spent too many years in Blair's company. They were starting to sound alike. 

"B..boinking?" Mark had turned the color of paste. 

"I could use a different word, if you promise to let some of your blood come out of hiding." Jim tried not to sound too pleased with himself. "Things like that are important in an investigation. It makes what Shiva did a hate crime." 

"It's not like that." Mark picked up a napkin and started twisting it. 

"I think it is. Or is now, if we're going to split hairs. She hurt him, right in front of you. You've spent the better part of four years making sure he ate, didn't walk into traffic, paid his bills, all the things artists forget to do. You took care of him. He was your best friend. How am I doing so far?" 

"Good." Way, way too good. 

"You took care of him and he made your life interesting. His coworkers are nothing like the guys at the docks. You got to meet all his artsy friends, the women who walk around in nothing but body paint, you got to meet the starlets that showed up at the parties they went to. He was kinda weird, but you loved him anyway." 

"I never said-" 

Jim cut him off. "But you never would have touched him if she hadn't tortured you. It wouldn't have occurred to you. You weren't lovers before, but you are now." 

Mark let the mangled napkin drop from his fingers. "How did you know?" They thought they'd been so careful, acting just like before in public. 

"You just told me." Jim motioned for the waitress. "Can we get this guy a slice of pie? He looks ready to pass out." 

"I told..." Ethan was going to kill him. 

"We already knew. We've been surveying your apartment." 

"I...I..." The waitress dropped a slice of lemon meringue in front of Mark. "I promised to protect him, when we went out that night. I was joking, you know. He had this habit of attracting really drunk, clingy women and I promised I wouldn't let anyone get their claws into him. I promised." 

"You two spent so much time arguing it took me a while to figure it out. Then, yesterday, I heard the two of you breathing." 

"Breathing?" 

"The two of you were breathing in sync." It had sounded familiar to Jim, and he'd finally placed it. It was a sound he recognized from his own bed. "We're not ogres, Mr. Kirch. The entire department has to undergo sensitivity training." 

"She, uh... She came in that morning and I was still sorta hanging on to him." Mark's face was the color of a tomato, but the truth was out now and there was no more reason to lie. "She just sort of looked at us and then she smiled. I thought we were going to die." 

"But you didn't. She let you go." Why? The why he'd leave up to Blair. 

"She let us go and now..." Mark hung his head. "I didn't know. If I had known, we never would have ended up in this mess in the first place." 

How could you not know you wanted someone? How could you live with someone for four years and not know you wanted to fuck them? "Why the two of you?" 

"We went out and we met this beautiful blonde. She cozied up to Ethan and since I'd promised to protect him, so I hung around. I bought us a few rounds of drinks and then she suggested we should all go back to her place." 

Both of them? "You didn't think that was a bit... odd?" 

"No." Mark suddenly seemed very interested in his pie. "We'd done it before. Stupid, isn't it?" 

Christ. How repressed could a person be? At least he'd always been capable of listening to his dick. "And afterwards, she drugged you." 

"And we woke up in her dungeon. The real bitch of it is, she wasn't even that good in bed. I have should have just stayed home and... what'd you say... boinked my roommate. I'd have had a better time and I'd probably need less therapy." 

* * *

"Jim, you can't be serious." 

"I wish I was kidding, but I'm not. She's kidnapping these men, torturing them and seeing if they turn to each other for comfort." 

Simon started searching for his just-in-case cigar. "How can you be sure?" Silence. "Answer me." 

"I can't." 

"At least give me a hint, Jim. Something-" 

"Lash." 

Fuck. "Stop. Don't say anymore. You're right, don't tell me." Cigar, cigar, where was the damned cigar? "Let's be honest. Is Sandburg learning anything of use out there?" 

"He's learning how not to run a college football team, but that's not helping us any. This case took a left turn the minute Shiva turned out to be a woman. He's not going to learn anything from Jimelski. Besides, if we're going to catch Shiva, I'll need my roommate." 

Jim Ellison was grinning and suddenly Simon had a very bad feeling about this. 

* * *

They're lying together in Ethan's bed and Mark ran his fingers through his friend's hair. It still wasn't safe to touch in the dark, when you couldn't see the bandages and you couldn't be sure where your hands would land. He'd settle for this. "I, uh, talked to the cop today." 

"Uh huh." Ethan had actually taken his pain meds, so he was sort of floating. Mark's next comment brought him abruptly down to earth. 

"They bugged our apartment. They've been watching us. They know." 

Ethan pulled away. "Where? Where's the bug?" 

"No idea." Damn it, and he'd just gotten comfortable too. 

"So your mission to make me scream tonight, was that to give the cops a thrill?" Silence. "Damn it, Mark. I told you, I told you to just tell that Ellison guy." 

"You're not right all that often, you know? How was I supposed to know this is why she let us go?" Mark gestured at the total lack of space between them on the bed. 

"You're kidding." 

"No." 

"This is the part where I'd hit you, if we hadn't been tortured in the recent past." 

"Thanks for your restraint." 

* * *

Blair stepped off the plane and barely managed to resist kissing the ground. "I hate flying." 

"It could be worse. I hear flying out of the North East in the winter is hell." 

Blair turned around and smiled. "When we actually find Shiva, can I shoot her for getting me sent to that hell hole?" 

"We'll see." His Guide latched onto him. "Feeling a little separation anxiety, Chief?" 

"Anxiety is not what I'm feeling. I vote we get out of here before I do something that gets us arrested." 

Jim subtly pried Blair's hands from his ass. "I'll second that and raise you a promise to act out all the dreams I've been having about you while you were gone." 

"Oh god." Blair grabbed his carry on. "Go, go." He gave Jim a shove towards the exit. 

* * *

He couldn't sleep, even though Jim had passed out hours ago. All Blair could think about was Shiva and the half-dozen sketches Ethan had drawn. Which one, if any, was the real Shiva, and how were they ever going to catch her? Really, what could they tell people? Don't go cruising with your buddy, there's a serial killer out there who wants to see you fuck? No one would believe them. Sleep was obviously a no-go tonight so he slipped out of bed and went downstairs to go over the file again. 

"This case is going to give me an ulcer." He opened his laptop and logged onto the Precinct's intranet so he could check his email. What he saw chilled his blood. 

He had new mail alright, from Shiva_Destroyer. 

"Fuck." Blair opened the email, almost not wanting to know what he'd find. 

_Dear Detective Sandburg,_

_Welcome back to Cascade. I hope you enjoyed your vacation, because the real fun is just about to start. The two men in my basement aren't the type to break. Thanks to Ethan and Mark, I can tell now. Of course, they'll be given their six weeks, just like everybody else. They should be grateful to me, you know. I showed them the way to each other. They were beautiful together, Detective. I still watch them sometimes, when I'm bored. Mark has such a pretty mouth._

There were pictures attached to the email, as well as a text file. The pictures weren't of a dungeon, though. They were of an apartment. The apartment the two victims were living in. Of course, the pictures weren't just of the apartment. The men who lived there were in them too. That alone was creepy enough, but the content was X-rated. "She's watching them. She's watching them in the privacy of their own home!" 

Upstairs, Jim's eyes opened. The space next to him was cold and he could hear Blair's heartbeat down in the living room. His body sounded angry. "Sandburg?" 

"We need to get over there. We need to get over there _now_." Blair was pulling his boots on. "Come on. Put some clothes on, big guy." 

"Where are we going?" 

"To 736 Ferry Street. You, my dear human crime lab, are going to debug our victims' apartment." 

* * *

"The burns are taking forever to heal." Mark smoothed some of the burn cream over the two large burns on Ethan's back. "Mine don't look this bad, do they?" 

Ethan had a little smile on his face. "You wanna believe that, you go right ahead." Mark's hands were starting to wander. "You're not touching my dick until you wash that burn shit off." 

"Yeah, yeah." 

"I mean it." 

"You-" There was a knock on the door. "Pizza's here. Don't go anywhere." 

"I'm getting pizza, beer and sex. Why would I go anywhere?" Ethan, deciding this was exactly what it looked like, foreplay, put his shirt back on. 

Mark opened the door and swore. "What do _you_ want? Haven't you embarrassed me enough? Do you want to take pictures?" 

"We already have pictures." Blair realized that was probably the wrong thing to say. 

"Oh god." Ethan felt his face flush. "Who the hell are you?" 

"Detective Sandburg. I'm Ellison's partner. We have reason to believe your apartment has been bugged." 

"Of course it's been bugged. Your partner here is the one who bugged it!" Ethan had had just about all he could take. "I think-" 

"You told them you bugged their apartment?" Blair smacked Jim across the chest. "Way to intimidate, big guy." 

"What was I supposed to say? They weren't going to tell us anything, ever." Jim gave Blair a glare that had long ago lost effect. "This worked." 

"You mean, you guessed?" Mark wasn't sure if he wanted to strangle Ellison of just kick him around a little. "Who the hell guesses something like this?" 

"Ellison's very perceptive." Blair pulled out a few of the pictures he'd printed. "We haven't been watching you, but someone else has." 

Mark grabbed them and blinked a few times. "Wow. It's like porn, only I'm in it." 

"We think Shiva bugged your apartment while she had you captive. We need your permission to search for the cameras." 

"How many of these did she send you?" Ethan took the pictures and stared at them for a long moment. "Has anyone else seen them?" 

"Not yet. That's why we have to search for the cameras." 

Ethan flipped to the final picture, one of him on his knees in the kitchen. "Find the damn cameras." 

* * *

They found three cameras, two microphones, and a love note from Shiva. 

_To whom it may concern,_
    
    
            _Maybe it was a bad idea to keep an eye on them, but I couldn't help myself. They're beautiful and that's why I let them go. But you can't fault me for wanting to see if they learned any new tricks._
            _Shiva_
    

"She, uh, wants more than just a first time. She wants to see what happens afterwards." Blair threw the photocopy of the note onto Simon's desk. "She sent me a story." 

"I don't have a copy of any story." Simon started searching for one on his desk. 

"There's a copy of it in the file, but I don't think it's your kind of thing. It's what the internet generation calls slash." 

"She wrote out a description of how she tortured them?" What kind of maniac were they dealing with? 

"No, what she wrote describes what happened afterwards. To quote Mark, it's like porn, only they're in it." 

"Sandburg, do I want to know?" 

"Probably not, sir, but I've done my profile. Shiva is a slasher, late twenties, early thirties. She's highly intelligent, but a little insane." 

"A little insane? Sandburg, she's killed twenty men because they didn't fall into each other's arms." 

"Okay, maybe she's a lot insane but we can use that." 

"Why do I get a sinking feeling when I look at you?" 

"Because there's only one way to catch her. We have to give her an irresistible set up." 

"And you have one?" 

Blair glanced over his shoulder, out into the bull pen, where Jim was sitting at their desk. "You know we do." 

"I can't hear this, kid." 

"You have to. Setting aside all the things I can't tell you, you know what everyone thinks about me and Jim. Shiva's already showed an interest in me. We get her to focus on us and we can end this." 

"The rumors will get worse. You weren't gone long enough, Sandburg. Commissioner Williams still wants to reassign you. You do this, catch Shiva, and you'll probably be promoted and transferred. Let me give this case to someone else." 

"You can't. She's interested in me. I can give her what she wants." 

"This is not going to go well, Sandburg." He'd spent so many years protecting them, but he wasn't going to be able to save them from this. 

"She'll kill again." Blair could feel Jim's eyes on him and knew he was listening. "We have to protect the tribe." 

"It always comes back to that, doesn't it?" Simon motioned for him to join them. "Let's hear this plan." 

* * *

"We can't, Jim." 

"Blair, please. I'll beg if you want me to." Blair had been away for weeks. One night, that was all he got? 

"What if she's watching?" They'd done an interview with the local news network tonight, trying to see if they could bait Shiva into hunting them, like they were hunting her. Blair stroked Jim's face a few times, then drew his hand away. "We have to give her an irresistible set up for her story. Two close friends, practically living in each other's pockets, all under this umbrella of intense unresolved sexual tension." 

"Why doesn't she just watch _Stargate_ like everyone else?" They had already done this for the better part of three years. Jim liked the resolved kind of sexual tension better. 

"Because she's insane." He patted Jim's knee. "Now go upstairs before I jump you. I have a spare room to make livable." 

Blair could hear Jim curse his way up the stairs and though he agreed with the sentiment, he doubted the last one was physically possible. 

* * *

His hands were starting to itch. It was hard to believe he'd once gone three years without Blair in his bed, but that had been a long time ago. Now, just a few days felt like pure torture to Jim, especially after the month Blair had spent in New York. Especially since they were always together, since they had to play up the UST for Shiva. 

Sometimes, when they were out trolling for serial killers, er... women, it's all he can do to not drag Blair into the nearest dark corner. 

"Jim, this is Ellie. Ellie, this is my roommate, Jim." The woman Blair was introducing had electric blue hair and an earful of metal. The type a 26 year old grad student had dated, half a lifetime ago. 

"Blair tells me you're cops." Ellie ran her fingers across Jim's belt holster. "I have this thing for authority." 

Jim swallowed hard and wondered if he could just shoot himself now. 

* * *

They had barely walked through the door before Jim had Blair pinned to a wall and kissed him, hard enough that Blair knew his lips would be bruised tomorrow. Jim's tongue dipped inside, just to get a little taste, then he reluctantly stepped back. 

Blair let his head hit the wall and closed his eyes, panting. "Wow." 

Jim licked his lips, tasting Blair. "Yeah." 

"That was a lot more fun than the last time you threw me against the wall." Blair shakily pushed off from the wall. "I'm just gonna go jerk off now." 

"Kay." Jim sank to the floor and tried to catch his breath. "Have fun." The sooner they caught Shiva, the better. 

* * *

He has to drink a lot when they're out Shiva baiting. If he doesn't, all he can think about is Blair. Ellie is sitting in his lap, but Jim is a thousand miles away, thanks to the tequila. 

She bit his ear, then blew on it. "So, what do you think about taking this party somewhere more private?" 

"Roommate's drunk. Can't just leave him here." He has a tracer in his pocket and one in his mouth. `Shiva, however crazy she is, isn't Brackett. She shouldn't be able to find it. If Ellie is Shiva, our tails will be able to find us within a few hours.' 

"Why don't we just bring him along?" Jackpot. She handed Jim her drink. "Finish this for me. I'll go get him." 

Jim drank the pink concoction down before the medicinal taste hit his tongue. His last thought was of that scene in _The Princess Bride_ where Wesley killed the kidnaper with a poison he was immune to. 

* * *

His mouth tasted like cotton but when he opened his eyes Blair gave a sigh of relief. "Thank god. You were out forever." 

"Did we get her?" His vision was really blurry, like he'd turned it almost all the way down. 

"No, she got us." Blair raised his hands and when Jim focused enough, he could see handcuffs. "She came up to me on the dance floor and put a gun in my ribs. She told me she'd kill you if I didn't come along quietly. When I went for my piece, she stuck me with a needle." 

"And the cabbie thought we were drunk. Guess that explains how a five foot tall woman could kidnap all those victims without help." Jim managed to sit up and found his own hands were bound. "Any word on the cavalry?" 

"I don't think they're coming. She found the tracers. She knew what we were trying to do. She was baiting us while we were baiting her." The dungeon she was keeping them in was very different from Jimelski's. There was a sink, a bed, and he could see a first aid kit. This was a long term holding cell. 

"Wonderful, just wonderful." Jim dialed up his hearing. The one good thing about this was he didn't have to keep his hands to himself anymore. He could hear someone coming down the stairs. "She's coming." 

The large steel door of their prison rolled open and a very different woman entered. The blue dye had been washed out and all the piercings were gone. "Gentlemen, welcome to my lair." 

"Shiva." Blair struggled to his feet. "Where are John Philips and Ron Corning?" 

"Dead. I got bored, and then, yesterday, you bought me a drink. So I disposed of my other guests." She gestured at the blood stains in one corner. "I've been watching you, and I get the impression that if you were anyone else, I'd be releasing you real soon. But you're the cops hunting me, so enjoy my hospitality while you can. Six weeks flies by so fast." 

"You're sick, you know that, right?" Sometimes they didn't, so Jim always checked. He couldn't believe they'd gotten themselves into this mess. "Why are you doing this?" 

"Why? Because I'm a slasher." She drew a piece of thin, flexible plastic from her sleeve. "No, no, that's not true. Mostly it's because I'm insane." Her eyes flitted between them. "Now. Who goes first?" 

* * *

He wokes up to pain. "Oh, fuck, this hurts." 

"Shh." Blair could feel Jim's hands cradling his head. "You have a concussion, Chief. Your head hit the floor when she let you out of the chains." 

"I'm sorry I got you into this, Jim." Ohh, concussions were bad. "So stupid. Of course she knew we were baiting her." 

"Quiet. She's watching us. No microphone, I don't think, just a camera." Jim shifted Blair so he was supporting him better. "She talked to me after you passed out. She hasn't killed twenty two men. It's more like forty. She'd been all over the world before she came here. She even told me her real name." 

"Her real name?" 

"Kathleen Marie Tuettle. Dr. Tuettle." He stroked Blair's hair, trying to block out the sound of clacking keys upstairs. "She's a clinical psychologist." 

"I know who she is, Jim. I went to one of her lectures last month." Dr. Tuettle was brilliant. And crazy, apparently. 

"She thinks she's doing a study." 

"Someone should tell her it's bad form to fuck your research subject." 

"You did. Of course, you didn't torture me after. Not like this." Jim was subtly checking Blair for any other injuries. "Any ideas on how we get out of here?" 

"When she unchained me, I couldn't even stay standing. I can't..." He made his eyes focus on Jim. "How long would it take you to learn to dial touch up and down on cue?" 

"Less than six weeks, I hope." He didn't even have to ask what the plan was, he already knew. Jim was the Sentinel and it was his job to get them out of here. 

* * *

Jim lay unconscious on the mattress in the center of their prison. She'd beaten him with a whip and made Blair watch. He rubbed the back of Jim's neck, trying to bring him back to reality. `He's got the dialing down part perfect, it's the dialing back up that's a bit trickier.' Blair watched her pack up her equipment for a good three minutes before he managed to find his voice. "Jim tells me you're doing a study." 

"That's right." She scrubbed at a spot of blood on her whip. "On the subtext inherent in close male friendships and how often it can be changed into something more." 

"And you kill the men afterwards so they can't reveal your premise and invalidate your data?" Jim was starting to stir back to life under his hands. 

"That's right." She zipped her bag. "I knew you'd understand." 

"You're going to kill us, so do you mind if I ask a few questions? I mean, I've spent almost a year studying you." If they were going to get out of here, Blair had to figure out what had made Kathleen tick. 

"Shoot." Kathleen pulled up a chair. "I guess I can give you a few minutes." 

"Why are you doing this? I mean your real reason. Eventually, no matter how brilliant you are, they'll catch you." 

"It's a compulsion. I've always wanted to do a study like this, but I was never able to think of a way to test out my theory. Then, when I was in the hospital three years ago, it came to me, a way to test the hurt/comfort principle." 

"Hospital?" That was a new one. 

"I was recovering from surgery." Kathleen looked at her watch. "I have to go." 

"Wait. I just want you to know that all this, it's unnecessary. Jim and I played out this scenario a long time ago." 

"Really?" She sounded skeptical. 

"I started working with Jim as a civilian consultant. I'd only been there a few months when I was kidnapped by David Lash." 

"The mimic killer. I was just finishing med school then. He was big news." Lash had fascinated her. That was why she never went out as herself. "When I heard... You were the unnamed civilian. Wow!" 

"I hadn't had a panic attack since I'd met Jim so when he came home and found me hyperventilating on his couch, the army medic in him kicked in. I latched onto him and he didn't ask me to let go, so I didn't. I didn't for a long time." 

"See, I don't believe a word that just came out of your mouth. I've watched the two of you for weeks and I saw a lot of unresolved sexual tension. That's unresolved tension." Kathleen stood. "Sorry. Don't believe you." 

Blair shrugged. "Believe what you want." 

Kathleen slid the metal door aside and Blair heard the lock click shut. He sighed and using his best Guide voice said, "Wake up, Jim." Jim obediently opened his eyes and Blair kissed him for a long minute, reassuring himself Jim was back, if not exactly okay. "She's gone. We need to think up a new plan. This isn't working." 

Jim turned his head and spat some blood. "I could hear you talking to her. Why did you tell her the truth?" 

"Because I can't watch her torture you anymore, okay? It was so hard to get you back this time. By the time we get through six weeks of this, your brain is going to be mush." Blair pulled at his cuffed wrists. "I can hear howling. The wolf wants her to die." 

"Chief," Jim struggled not to scream as feeling came back to his limbs. "Chief, I can do this." 

"You can't. Look at you. You're going to burn out. There has to be another way." He could see Jim change the way he held himself. "Let's get you off your back." Blair helped him roll onto his side. "This is my fault." 

"It was my idea to bait her." 

"I should have come up with a better way. I'm supposed to protect you." 

"I think you have that a little backwards, Chief." In his mind, Jim mentally fumbled with his dials, trying to turn the pain back down. "You want to know something, though? With our luck, I'm amazed something like this never happened before." 

"We haven't gone looking for trouble in a long time. And if you have, don't tell me about it. We're going to live through this and I don't want to have to kill you afterwards." 

"I can do this. It's only been two weeks. I just need more time." 

"Time I can give you." Blair dipped a washcloth in cold water and dabbed at the marks the manacles had left. "Given enough time, you can fix any of my stupid mistakes." 

* * *

"You're not telling me you have nothing. If you value your life, Rafe, you will not come in here with nothing." 

Rafe glared out into the bullpen, where his fellow officers were safe. "Sir, all we know is they were last seen with a woman who had blue hair and lots of piercing. We found a woman matching that description at Sneaky Pete's. She told us she didn't do cops, she wasn't named Ellie, and she had an alibi. We think the real Shiva assumes the identity of some random person she's observed and pretends to be them. It's why Ethan and Mark said she looked different every week." 

"We've got to do better than this. Two cops do not just disappear. Tell those idiots out there that time is running out. That woman took something from us. I want it back, and alive." God, Simon needed a cigar. 

* * *

Using Blair as a touchstone, Jim had finally gotten his dials under control. "What did you mean, earlier? That given enough time, I could fix any of your mistakes?" 

"I turned you away and never asked you back. I lied to you. I was going to leave because I thought you wouldn't care. I let you ache for three years. I didn't do my job." Blair was sitting just close enough to touch Jim, but he was a million miles away. "I would have gone to Seattle and you would have died. And maybe the next time someone like Brackett made me an offer, I would have gone and the tribe would have suffered, maybe worse than Pope's." 

Jim reached out and touched Blair's ankle. "Don't do this to me. You can have a nervous breakdown _after_ we escape." 

"I can't take much more of this. I really can't. I'm seriously going to get PTS." 

Fingers slid softly across Blair's skin. "I know." Too many kidnappings. Too many bad memories. 

* * *

Kathleen opened the door to apartment 307 and stepped into the loft. She started wandering around, hoping to get some insight into the two men in her basement. "Whoa. What kind of psychopath color codes the Tupperware?" 

The rooms were an odd mix of modern Spartan and eclectic artifacts. Sandburg had a PhD of his own, so some of it made sense, but why the heavy Peruvian influence? The smaller room under the stairs looked more like a library than a bedroom but obviously someone had slept there recently. There was a journal hiding under the junk in his nightstand. 

_October 7th, 2004_

_Three women approached us tonight. One was too tall, the other one was too old. The third one, Ellie, has so much metal in her body she's probably never gotten onto an airplane without a strip search. Meanwhile, I'm back in the cave under the stairs and by the time this is all over, I'm going to have to retrain Jim not to steal the covers all over again._

Kathleen stared at the page then slammed the book shut. It was a setup. It had to be. There was an entire bookcase of journals, each with dates written on the spine. She picked one out at random and started to read. 

Three hours later, she was convinced Blair had told her the truth. She also thought maybe he was a little insane himself. No one, not even a task force, would take the time to dummy up six years of journals. "Now what?" 

Kathleen walked into the kitchen and got a glass of water. She shook one of her pills out of its bottle and swallowed it. The two men in her basement were lovers. They might have cut her inhibitions out with her brain tumor but she was still Kathleen Tuettle somewhere deep inside. After the surgery, that little voice of reason had never spoken again, but she still had some sense of fairness. That was why she'd let Ethan and Mark go. 

When this had first started, she hadn't planned on killing her subjects, until she realized letting them go would ruin her work. She didn't even get a thrill from the kill. The thrill was in breaking the subject, then watching to see what happened. The first two she'd tortured in Mexico hadn't broken. She had theorized they hadn't been close enough and moved on. 

The two men she'd brought home in Southern California hadn't done what she expected either. They'd been all over each other without needing any prodding and she'd let them go. They hadn't fit the study sample and they never knew how close they came to being victims 3 and 4. 

It wasn't until she'd found Ethan and Mark that she'd found her proof. The hurt/comfort principle could work. They had eventually turned to each other. Yes, Ethan and Mark had proved Kathleen right but Jim and Blair had proved something else. They had shown that almost forty years of fan fiction writers had been right. Sometimes, you weren't imagining the tension. Sometimes, ultra-close male friendships did become love affairs and lasting ones at that, based on her study of Jim and Blair. 

She'd finally found what she'd spent so long looking for and now she was going to have to kill it. It just wasn't fair. 

* * *

Ethan stared at the newspaper and gritted his teeth. Still missing. "She's going to kill them. Just like she's killed everyone else." 

"They're cops. Smart cops, since they figured us out. They'll escape." Mark spend most mornings resisting the urge to offer Ethan a mouth guard so he could read the paper without breaking a tooth. 

"Smart, yeah, but they won't give her what she wants. You saw them that night they came here. They never called each other by name. I don't think they're even friends." 

* * *

Blair shivered as Jim pulled away long enough to breath. "Is she upstairs?" 

"Gone still." He buried his face in Blair's neck. "Do you think she records us 24/7?" 

"At this point, do you really care?" He wasn't going to die never having touched Jim again. 

"I don't want the Evidence guys getting their thrills from watching us." 

Blair tried to think. "It's not economical to tape your subjects 24 hours a week for a six week stretch. I bet she's only taping us right after the torture sessions." 

"Good enough for me." He brushed his lips across Blair's and let them stay there. He leaned back and Blair followed him down until they were lying together on the mattress. Jim could only hope Shiva wouldn't be home anytime soon. 

* * *

Simon walked into the loft and instantly knew someone had been in here. Jim would never have left a glass sitting on the counter like that and no one that lived here wore lipstick. At least, he didn't think so... Shaking those thoughts away, he grabbed a ziplock bag and dropped the glass into it. She'd been in here. She'd taken his friends and she'd invade their lair - er, loft. This woman... If she was lucky, maybe they'd let her live long enough to be executed. But why had she come here? To bug the apartment? No, no, there was no way she was planning on letting them go. Not cops, not even if they cooperated. Simon started searching the apartment. Blair's journal was lying open on the bed. "Kid never learns, does he?" He picked it up, thinking he'd put it away so the Crime Scene people didn't read anything they shouldn't when the date caught his eye. April 1996. That date, it meant something. April 96, April 96... "Lash." Jim had said he knew because of Lash, hadn't he? 

_April 26th, 1996_

_He says he can still smell the chicken farm on my skin. Chicken and fear. My panic attacks aside, I say if David Lash almost killing me gets me into Jim's bed, or him into mine, I really don't care if I smell like a chicken. Of course, when I wake up I think there's one hell of a shower in my future._

Simon let the book drop from his hands. "Curiosity killed the Captain." He hadn't wanted to know. The one upside to knowing after years of pretending to be blind was he now had the knowledge to be a very rich man. Pushing away thoughts of a rich, early retirement aside and focusing on Jim and Blair, Simon gave the CSI team a call. 

* * *

Jim had dozed off when the angry footsteps came crashing down the stairs. The big steel door slammed open and Kathleen appeared in the doorway. Jim tightened his grip on Blair and he thought of what Mark had told him. "What do you want?" 

She didn't answer, just pulled Blair out of his arms. "Wake up. You're coming with me." 

Blair blinked at her a few times, then stood. "What's going on?" She looked pissed. Why was she pissed? 

"Come on." She dragged him out of the room by the chain of the handcuffs, slamming the door behind her. 

Jim jumped to his feet and ran to the door. He slammed his fists against it a few times, knowing it wouldn't do any good, but it made him feel a little better. He sank to the floor and cranked his hearing up. 

* * *

"Sit." Kathleen gestured at the couch. She'd brought him upstairs into the living room. 

"Okay." Blair sat down and she hooked his cuffs to the metal frame of her futon. Her house was so normal looking. It was obviously the house of an obsessive compulsive. Jim would probably have felt right at home. 

"Why did you bring me up here?" 

She opened the box on her table and removed a white card. "This is a Rorchart inkblot. I want you to tell me when you see." 

"Lady, you've tortured me enough. Do I really need a psych evaluation?" 

"I've read your journals. I think you do." She held up the card again. "Now tell me what you see." 

* * *

Simon watched the CSI team comb the loft and wished his human crime lab wasn't locked up in some madwoman's basement. 

"Sir." One of the technicians held up an evidence bag. "The hair, it's been dyed recently. You can see the dye hasn't rinsed out completely." 

One of the women in Blair's field notes had blue hair. "Someone find me Ellie Crane." 

* * *

"So I took him back." Kathleen had made him lie down on the couch and tell her everything. Obviously she'd never said that an anthropologist before, or she'd have known better. "I mean, what else could I do? Run away from my life? Make us both miserable? That was about six years ago." 

"You expect me to believe your partner is some sort of mutant with super senses?" 

"Shiva, you kidnap men and torture them until the clock runs out or they have sex. You have no right to tell me I'm crazy." Blair refused to be judged by a serial killer. 

"I wish I could let you go, I really do. You and Jim don't fit the study and even if you did, you're nuts. You'd throw off my sample." Kathleen set down her notepad and shook her head. "I wish I hadn't shown you my real face, I wish you weren't so good at what you do, then I could let you go. I may be clinically insane, but I'm not crazy." 

"You told me you had an operation. What kind?" Blair sent up a silent prayer that she wasn't a transsexual. The tabloids would eat them all alive. 

"I had a brain tumor removed while I was working in Mexico. They did something wrong, obviously." Kathleen saw the light go on in Blair's brain. "I see you've heard of Sr. Godfrida." 

"Yes." Great, just great. Just when things couldn't get any worse. 

* * *

When she threw him back into the dungeon, Jim was still trying to stop laughing. "The... the crazed killer thinks you need a shrink. Only you, Sandburg." 

"Shut up." Blair sat on the floor next to Jim, his back to the door. "Things are more complicated than I thought. Shiva isn't just your run of the mill psychopath. Her behavior is the result of a botched brain operation." 

"Sandburg, this isn't some soap opera. Brain surgery doesn't make you nuts." 

"It can, if it's done wrong. It's happened before." Jim could almost see Blair rifling through the library that was his brain. "In 1978, in Wettern, Belgium, at a convent of the Order of St. Joseph, a Mother Superior started murdering her patients." 

"Come on, Chief. Killer nuns?" Down the rabbit hole, and into the Sandburg zone. 

"Killer nun, singular. Her real name was Cecile Blombeck, but by seventy eight she was Sister Godfrida, the Mother Superior of the convent. She had a brain tumor removed and afterwards, she was superficially the same person but all her inhibitions were gone." Blair thought of the woman upstairs, who'd once written excellent studies on homosexuality in the military and taught classes in Social Psych. "That nun became a coke addict, started seducing her subordinates, and killing her patients. It's not so far fetched that a psychologist like Shiva would start enacting her darker fantasies." 

"So what does that mean?" 

"It means we have a killer without a conscience. She not only doesn't care what she's doing is wrong, she may not even be capable of telling right from wrong. That part of her brain was damaged." Blair leaned back and looked up at Jim. "We have to get out of here, and soon." 

"Soon." Jim stroked Blair's hair. When she'd taken him away... 

"You realize this is probably the last case we're ever going to work together." 

"What do you mean?" 

"If they try and force me to transfer, I'll have to quit, or you'll have to take a desk job. There's no way Commissioner Williams will let us keep working together." 

"I suddenly see a PI license in our future." He let his hands rest in Blair's hair and tried to believe they had a future. "We'll figure it out." 

* * *

Upstairs, Kathleen turned off the microphone and dug out Blair's cell phone. She dialed a number from the phone list. 

"Banks. You'd better have something for me." 

"I do, actually. I have a problem for you, Captain. I think one of my test subjects is insane." Kathleen looked at the monitor, at the lips moving in silence. "Detective Sandburg believes Detective Ellison is some kind of superhero." 

In the bullpen of Major Crimes, Simon's favorite coffee mug hit the linoleum. "Shiva?" 

"You can't conduct a study with an insane person. My problem is, I don't want to kill them, but I have to. They've seen my face, they know my name." 

"Those two men, they're not just cops. They're my best detectives, my best friends." A coffee puddle was spreading across the floor, and everyone had stopped what they were doing and was listening. "You don't have to kill them." 

"I do. They know who I am." 

"So will I, eventually. You left a hair in the loft, Ellie." 

Kathleen fingered her hair and reminded herself to wear a hat next time. "My name's not Ellie, Captain. Please, give me a reason to let them go." 

"Because they've given you what you want." Simon couldn't do this out here. He ducked into his office. 

"You don't know what I want!" 

"I do, actually. I have Sandburg's notes. They don't make that much sense, but I have them. You're a serial killer with slasher tendencies. There's a sidebar here that explains what a slasher is and tells me it has less to do with what you do to your victims than what you want them to do to each other. Blair believes you've been seeking the perfect torture scene that would lead to..." Simon squinted at the notepad. "The hurt/comfort, first time scenario. How'd I do?" 

"I believe I've underestimated Dr. Sandburg, but that still-" 

"They gave you something else you wanted too. Something you may not have even known you were looking for." There were two words that weren't explained like all the rest of the terms, but even without a definition Simon knew what it meant. "You've been waiting for an established relationship." 

"I don't want to hurt them, not if I don't have to. I want a chance to observe them in their natural environment, as partners, that coveted cop pairing, but even if I let them go, I can't do that." 

Coveted cop pairing? Simon didn't even want to know. "Why? Why can't you?" 

"Because you'll separate them, and then what's the point?" Her questions still unresolved, Kathleen hung up. 

* * *

"She called you?" Commissioner Allen Williams stared at Simon's cell phone in disbelief. 

"She's gotten to the `taunt the police' stage. Sir, I think Sandburg is working his usual magic. She's starting to crack. She wants to let them go." 

"Why? You can't even explain why he let Kirch and Lancaster go." 

"I have explained it. Twice." 

"I cannot go to the Mayor and tell him Shiva killed twenty men because they wouldn't screw. I cannot go to the press and tell them she's torturing the cop of the year because she thinks he and his partner make a nice couple! It just doesn't make sense." 

Outside, Simon could hear Rhoda snickering and sighed. "Shiva is a serial killer. Blair has given us an explanation of her motives. I'm sorry it's not a nice clean one like having a dog tell her to kill." 

"Are we any closer to finding this Ellie woman?" 

"We found a woman named Ellie Crane. She's a fifty seven year old school teacher in the suburbs. The name's a red herring, and so is the description in Blair's notes. We know from Ethan and Mark she regularly changes her appearance, and since they never saw her real face, they can't even tell us what she actually looks like. All we know is she probably won't look like any of the drawings we have." 

"We need to get them back. Ellison and Sandburg are too popular to sacrifice." Williams paused. "Unless she doesn't give us a choice." 

Sacrifice. Like they were pawns. Simon got the sinking feeling he was on his own. 

* * *

This time, it was Jim sitting on the couch. "He's not crazy." 

"He thinks you're a _mutant_. He thinks you can hear his heartbeat twenty miles away. He thinks you can smell his cologne when he walks up the block. He thinks you can see-" 

Jim had to cut her off. Obviously, she'd done some research on them. "You must have misunderstood. I used to be a Ranger. My senses are well honed, I'll admit that, but they're not that good." 

"I didn't misunderstand. He thinks you can do these things. You can't continue to encourage him. He's sick, and he needs help." 

"He needs help? Shiva, how many men have you tortured?" 

"42." Kathleen smiled a little. "42. You get it, don't you?" 

"No." 

"42 is the answer." 

"But what is the question?" God, he hated crazy geniuses. 

"People have wanted to know that for years and now I can tell them. How many men do you have to torture before you find the right two? The answer is 42." Kathleen looked far too pleased with herself. "Now, setting aside the meaning of life, we need to talk about Blair. How long has he had these delusions?" 

"Since we met." 42. 40 to find Ethan and Mark, 42 to find Jim and Blair. Why were things like this always happening to them? "I was having some allergic reactions after I got out of the army. He helped me adjust to being in a city again." 

"He's always had these delusions? How the hell did he become a cop?" 

Jim tried to keep his anger at a simmer. "Can we not talk about this? He's not insane." 

"Fine. Let's talk about something else. Tell me about your sex life." 

The wooden arm of the chair Jim was cuffed to made a creaking sound as his hands tightened. 

"Come on, tell me about Blair." 

"It's private. I'm a very private person." 

"I could leave you up here and go torture it out of Blair, if you'd like." She didn't mean it, but Jim had no way of knowing that. Kathleen had seen them on tape, and she'd gotten Blair's side of the story, and now she wanted Jim's. 

"No, don't." Jim made his hands unclench. "What do you want to know?" 

"Tell me about the spring he almost left. Tell me what happened. Tell me why he took you back." 

* * *

Mark opened his eyes and stared at the clock. Midnight. He must have fallen asleep. "Ethan?" 

There was a snore by his left ear and his arm was going numb. Ethan shifted a little and nuzzled at Mark's neck. He stroked Ethan's hair for a minute, then rolled him out of the way and got out of bed. He went into the bathroom, turned on a light, and stared into the mirror for a long time. He needed to make sure he still recognized the man looking back at him. He thought he looked the same as he had that night he'd taken Ethan with him to Ebony's and that seemed wrong because he felt different. Shiva had made him different. 

There were hickeys on his neck most mornings and the guys at the docks kept making jokes about getting right back on the horse. Mark knows they think Shiva molested him somehow, but that's not really the truth. She tortured them, but she hadn't raped them. What they'd done that first night in her bedroom had been consensual, if bad, sex and after that she'd never touched them again. As for Ethan... Mark touched one of the red marks on his neck. Ethan was taking very good care of him, in ways he hadn't even considered before. This thing between them is something he'd never even thought about, but it's pretty fucking amazing. Still, the question remained. Three months ago, he'd gone out woman hunting with Ethan. About six weeks ago, he'd felt the first tentative brush of his friend's hands and tonight... "I'm still me." Nothing that happened between them changed that. 

There came an unexpected answer from the bedroom. "I'm very happy for you. Now shut off the damn light and come back to bed. We have to be up at five." 

For a minute, Mark couldn't answer. Why was he doing this? He should have moved out the day they'd been released. He should have walked away, and pretended none of it ever happened. He should not be jumping Ethan every chance he got. He felt... 

"I'll make it worth your while if you come back to bed." There was a moment's hesitation. "Are you okay? Did I hurt you?" He could hear Ethan curse and try to get up. "Fucking pain meds turn me into jelly." 

"Don't get up. I'm fine." Mark shut the light off. He felt like he belonged here. 

* * *

"Wow." Kathleen looked at the pile of notes she'd taken. "You know, if I could publish this without getting arrested, I'd have one hell of a paper." 

"Blair used to say that same thing." Of course, it had been the Feds carting them off they'd been worried about but it was the same idea. Jim glanced at the clock. It was after midnight. "Are we done?" 

"Yes, actually. I won't bother you anymore. I'm stopping the sessions. I have all the data I need." 

"You're not going to torture us anymore?" Jim took a moment to rethink his life, because when the sadist stopped torturing you, it was supposed to be a good thing. "Why?" 

"The torture is designed to break down the influence of society. You and Blair obviously don't care what the larger culture thinks. I'm not going to hurt you for no good reason." 

"Gee, thanks." The marks on his back would probably scar, and three of Blair's fingers were broken, but at least the nice serial killer wasn't going to torture them anymore now that she had all her data. No, that would be crazy. 

"You're welcome. Excuse me for just a minute." She got up and went into the kitchen. She shook a pill into her hand. 

Jim glanced at the bottle, then looked at it more closely. Topamax? "They really botched your surgery, didn't they?" 

"What do you mean?" Her hands tightened on the bottle. 

"Topamax. That's an anti-seizure drug." It was also an anti-psychotic, not that it was doing Shiva much good. 

Kathleen looked at the bottle and its itty bitty type she had a hard time reading when it was five inches from her nose. She dropped the bottle into a drawer. "Back to the basement. Now." 

* * *

His phone was ringing. Simon fumbled for it as he clicked on the lamp on his nightstand. "It's after midnight. This had better be good." 

"It's all true, isn't it? Everything in Blair's journals. Jim Ellison is really a Sentinel, Blair's really a Shaman. They're the guardians of this city." 

"That's right." He should be recording this, but he wouldn't. They couldn't have anything about Sentinels on record. 

"They shouldn't be here." God, Kathleen needed a drink. "They're outside the criteria of my study. I want to let them go." She touched the tape she'd recorded the day she'd been gone searching the loft. They were beautiful together, they really were. "I want to see how they act when they don't know I'm watching. Who would I call to arrange that?" 

"Commissioner Williams, but it won't do you any good. Even before you took them, they were about to be split up, but then, you already knew that." Simon sat up and rubbed his eyes. "Let them go." 

"I can't. Especially if they're about to be separated. I know they want to be together. I can make sure they're together forever." 

"But you don't want to kill them. There has to be another way." Simon suddenly missed Blair more than ever. Negotiating with the psycho female villain of the week was his job. 

"Maybe you could come find them." Kathleen stroked the spine of the tape again. Oh, how she wanted to see them out in the field. "That could work." 

"Tell me where you're hiding them." 

"Can't do that. You'll have to find them and time is running out. You only have three days left." 

The line went dead and Simon cursed. "God damned cryptic serial killers." She was playing games. What was he missing? He got out of bed and turned on his computer. Somewhere out there was his answer. 

* * *

"What do you think Kathleen is going to do?" 

Jim had noticed Blair had stopped calling her Shiva. Was it to make it harder to kill them? "She's pacing." 

"I mean tomorrow, when time runs out." His bandaged hand was aching but he still reached for Jim. "I'm doing that panic thing again. Make me stop." 

"I always knew there was someone out there your mumbo jumbo wouldn't work on." Jim gave the ceiling a withering look. "But why did it have to be her?" 

* * *

"Six weeks tomorrow." Ethan's voice was flat, emotionless. "They're going to die because they tried to help us." 

"You can't think of it like that. This is not our fault. They knew what they were doing when they went hunting for her." 

"How am I supposed to think of it, Mark? You were right. We should have kept our mouth shut. They never would have tried baiting her like this if we hadn't told them." 

"We didn't tell them. They guessed." 

"That's what I've never understood. How the hell did they guess? Who guesses a thing like this?" Ethan had to wonder. The only bug in their apartment had been Shiva's, so how had Detective Ellison known? 

* * *

Allen Williams was having a very bad day. There was a mere twenty four hours left on the clock and the people of Cascade were turning out in droves to support Ellison and Sandburg. It wasn't going to go well for him if Shiva killed them. However, if they pulled off their typical miracle bullshit, the first thing he was going to do was stick Jim Ellison safely behind a desk and ship Blair Sandburg off to the research machine in Olympia. He wasn't dealing with this anymore. His own wife was saying rosaries for them every night and every blue-blooded widow in the city was calling his office, demanding he do something. 

The phone ran, and he angrily answered it. "What? For god's sake, what?" 

"I have your men, and I'm prepared to give them back." 

Allen knew he was an arrogant bastard and he knew he'd only made it this far because he golfed with the mayor, but he didn't consider himself a fool. "How do I know you're really Shiva?" 

"When I dump the bodies, I cut the Shiva symbol into the arms of my victims. Now, let's cut through all the red tape. I'm perfectly willing to return Jim and Blair, on one condition." 

"I'm not in the habit of negotiating with mad men. Or mad women, for that matter." 

"This is not a matter of negotiating. I want to release them, but if you don't do as I ask. I'll just kill them. My request is a simple one." 

"Simple." He tried to suspend his disbelief. 

"Yes. See, I'm not done studying them yet. I need to see them in their natural state, as partners." Kathleen smiled. She left the `as lovers' unspoken. "You get your men back, I get a nice paper, and I'll leave the jurisdiction and never bother you again. As long as Jim and Blair stay partners." 

"I'm sorry, what?" 

"As long as Jim and Blair are partners, I'll go away. Who knows, I might even learn to behave myself." 

"Ellison and Sandburg are too emotionally involved to work together anymore. The level of intimacy they displayed baiting you just proves that." 

"I'll kill them and you'll be seen as the man who let the Detective of the Year die because he wanted to be a bastard. And I'll make sure everyone knows it." 

"Give me some time to think about it." 

"You want to think about it? Who's the cold hearted killer here?" 

"These two men... Did they tell you about the cows? I'd be better off without them." His wife would never speak to him again, but his ulcers would calm down. 

"You have twenty hours left, you sick fuck. I'll call at zero hour." The line went dead. 

* * *

"Get in out of the rain, you idiot!" Mark had come home from work and found Ethan out on the balcony, standing in the ice cold rain staring into space. 

"I remember seeing a man, sitting on that bench, the first week we were back. It must have been Detective Ellison. He was doing surveillance on us. He probably had a parabolic mike, that's how they knew." 

"What are you talking about?" 

"He must have been able to see us. See us, or see something in us. See this in us. See what Shiva saw to make her take us home from that bar." 

"You're acting crazy, Ethan." The idea that Sandburg and Ellison were probably about to die wasn't something he wanted to think about. "Please come inside." There was no answer from his friend. "Damn it, Ethan. Do you want me to beg?" 

"No. No, I would never make you beg." Not anytime soon, at least. The memory of pleading `stop, please stop, don't hurt me anymore, I'll do anything, just don't hurt me anymore' still rang in both their nightmares. Ethan looked up at the sky, blinking, as if he'd just realized it was raining. "How long has it been raining?" 

"Almost an hour, and if you don't get your ass in here right now, I'm calling your shrink." 

Ethan followed Mark inside and tried not to think about the clock. 

* * *

Five weeks, six days and twenty hours ago, Shiva had taken two of his closest friends. Simon could hear every tick of the clock. The men and women of Major Crimes were holding vigil in his living room, hoping for a call Simon no longer believed was coming. Still, he let them stay and he'd given Joel the key to the liquor cabinet while he lurked by the phone. 

At ten pm, it rang and Simon almost jumped out of his skin. He answered it, hitting the record button on the machine by his phone. "Hello?" 

"The man you work for is a real bastard, you know. I made him a very good offer and he told me he needed to think about it. Can you believe that?" 

"Actually, yes. Major Crimes isn't high on William's list of favorite department." Simon looked out at his detectives, all of them getting drunk and avoiding looking at the time. "Am I getting my men back?" 

"Maybe. Are you tracing this call?" 

"No." Simon crossed his fingers behind his back. 

"You shouldn't lie, Captain. It doesn't matter anyway. I'll tell you where I am, if you ask nicely." 

"Where are you, Ma'am?" He tried not to make the last word sound like a curse. 

"I'm on an airplane to a non-extradition country using one of Jim Ellison's credit cards to make this call." 

"You're letting them go." Simon felt like someone had just lifted a weight off of his chest. 

"No, I didn't say that." Shiva dropped the bar right back onto Simon's ribs with glee. "If your superior doesn't do as I ask, I'm not telling you anything. I'll get a return plane when we land, come home and kill Jim and Blair. Then I'll wait for a few days and start again. Your expert will be dead, your Sentinel will be dead and I can probably get a few more cycles out of this city before I move on." 

"You told me you wanted to let them go." 

"I do." The line went dead. 

* * *

The last minutes ticked away as Allen waited by the phone. He could hear his wife and her friends down in the kitchen. They were probably plotting his downfall. 

At three minutes before midnight, the phone rang and he slowly reached for it. "Hello?" 

"Well, Commissioner?" 

* * *

"How long ago was midnight?" When Shiva had left this morning, she'd chained both of them to the wall. Their chains were long enough that they could touch, but not long enough to rush the door. It was only then she'd told them their time was up, and there had been nothing they could do. 

"How should I know?" Jim was feeling just a little pissy. Waiting to die wasn't on his list of favorite things to do. 

"You're the Sentinel. Somewhere out there, someone is saying what time it is." 

Jim listened for a minute, then got a confused look on his face. "According to the woman down the street screaming at her husband, it's after two." 

"Not that I'm all that eager to be shot in the head, but where the hell is Kathleen?" Blair threw a stone against the wall. "She's doing this on purpose. She wants us to suffer." 

"Of course she does! The woman is a homicidal, twisted nut job!" 

"I have to stop thinking about this abstractly. I have to remind myself this is happening to US." Blair grabbed Jim's wrist. "Dial down to normal." 

"What? I have to hear-" 

"Hearing her coming won't do you any good. Why do you think she chained us up this morning? You're not going to be able to stop her, Jim. She's going to kill me first. She's going to kill me right in front of you, and I don't want you to see it in high def and hear it in surround sound. Get it?" He realized he was holding Jim's wrists hard enough to bruise, but at this point he didn't care. Blair wasn't sure if it was kindness that made her leave them so close, or just a hope of them giving her one more thrill before they died. 

"No. No, there's still a chance. I have to listen." He was a Ranger. He must know a thousand ways to kill someone. One of them would work. 

"No, you don't. She's not going to get close enough for you to do your Black Ops thing. She's going to stand right over there by the door, out of reach, and shoot me in the head. I don't want the last sound you hear to be the back of my skull blowing out." Blair's eyes were wild, and Jim knew he believed every word he said. 

He knew Blair was right. They'd finally ended up in a mess they couldn't get out of. Blair had done his voodoo, and failed. Jim hadn't been able to overpower Shiva when he'd had the chance. They were going to die here, and she was going to kill Blair first, they both knew that. "Okay. All right." Jim pried Blair's fingers from around his wrists and held them in his hands. He dialed it all down to normal, everything but touch, and they waited. And waited. Finally, they could both hear footsteps coming down the stairs. 

"This isn't how I imagined the end of the story." Jim brushed his fingertips across the line of chain binding Blair's hands together. "I always thought I'd go first, or maybe if we lived long enough, we'd be one of those old couples who dies a few days apart. I never thought it was going to end like this." 

"I don't know. This is actually pretty tame on my list of ways to die horribly. At least there's no water." Blair looked into Jim's eyes. "I love you. I'm sorry we wasted those three years. I'm so sorry." 

"I know." The footsteps were closer now. "I love you too, Blair. We've just never had enough time." As the door started to roll open, he pulled Blair in close and kissed him, not wanting to die not having done it just one more time. 

There was a long silence, as neither of them looked up. Neither of them wanted to see her watching them. Finally, a voice spoke. "For Christ's sake. Do you know how long I've been avoiding walking in on a scene exactly like this one?" 

Blair's eyes flashed open and he gave Jim a little shove. "It's Simon." 

"You could sound a little more grateful that I came and rescued you. Alone, I might add." Simon dangled a handcuff key in front of Jim, then dropped it in his hand. "You look like hell, Ellison. Let's get you both out of here." 

* * *

Jim suddenly understood why Ethan and Mark had insisted on being treated and released. Who would want to be tortured more after six weeks in Shiva's care? 

The tape on his back was already itching and as soon as he could, he'd get Blair to switch it to the kind he could stand. Right now, though, he was just grateful to be alive. Embarrassed, but grateful. "So, now what?" 

"I don't know." Blair's broken fingers were splinted and he was looking at the pen and paper on the table with annoyance. "I do know one thing for sure, though. You're going to be typing your own reports for a while." 

"That's not what I meant, Sandburg. I mean, do we resign now, or do we wait for the other shoe to drop?" Jim could hear them all out in the hall, congratulating Simon. "Right now, I'm about ready to tell the tribe I need a vacation." 

"A vacation, yeah, but two weeks from now you'd be going stir crazy. No, we wait. Paperwork takes time, and we have public support. Not even Williams can split us up tomorrow without raising some eyebrows." 

Jim checked to make sure no one that shouldn't see was watching them, and stroked Blair's face, skirting the healing cuts. "Why do you think she let us go?" 

"I don't know." Blair leaned back in his chair, the front legs leaving the ground. "Maybe what we are to each other? I called her by name, all the time. It makes it harder for them to kill you, if you seem human to them, but I don't think anything I said meant anything to her. Maybe she just didn't want to be a cop killer." 

The door opened and Simon walked in. "Kathleen Tuettle called me from onboard a plane bound for Costa Rica. From there, God only knows where she went." 

"We have to find out. Six weeks from now, do we really want a call from Costa Rica telling us she's killed again?" Blair let the front legs of his chair hit the ground. 

"We've alerted the authorities, but until she starts her pattern again, we have no way of knowing where she went. She's an expert on changing her appearance. None of the sketches given to us by Ethan Lancaster or the description in your field notes match Kathleen Tuettle's description." Simon looked as angry as Blair and Jim felt. "We lost our chance the minute she got on that plane." 

"We'll find her. I still have friends in low places." Jim started to mentally make a list of all his living old army buddies that he could still trust. 

Simon waited until Blair leaned back in his chair again. "So. What exactly did the two of you _do_ for six weeks?" 

Blair tilted back just a little too far and lost his balance. He would have hit the floor if Jim hadn't grabbed the chair at the last minute. "That was low, Simon. Low." 

Pulling Blair back into a normal, sitting position, Jim asked, "Are you done, sir, or do you want to tease us some more?" 

"I'm done. Mostly." 

"Are we? Done, I mean?" Blair made sure all four legs of his chair were firmly planted on the ground. "When we took this case, you told me the Commissioner would split us up afterwards." 

"I'm sure he wants to, but he's not going to, not now. Your release was conditional on the two of you remaining partners. Something about studying you in the wild." 

Well, that answered that question. Wonderful. Blair looked to his fingers and grimaced. Three broken fingers and loads of paperwork to do. How fun. "Where do you think she went?" 

"God only knows." Jim suddenly thought of Ethan, sitting where Blair was, drawing face after face, none of them right. "And right now, I don't want to." At this moment, all he wanted was to go home and lick his wounds. Shiva would have to wait. 

* * *

During the shift change, Simon sat down across from Rhoda's desk. "How does the pool work?" 

"The pool?" He couldn't mean... "The pool, Captain?" 

"Yes, Rhoda, that pool. What's the minimum bet?" 

Rhoda reached into her desk, behind a drawer, and touched the spine of a large ledger. "I thought we agreed there was no pool." 

"Absolutely. But if there was a pool, how would I go about placing a bet?" 

"This pool, if it existed, has a minimum bet of a hundred dollars, to be placed on a specific date." Rhoda drew the ledger out. "If you were placing a bet, when would it be?" 

"April 25th, 1996." He slid a few twenties across the desk. "If I were placing a bet." 

Rhoda put the money into her drawer. They kept the money in a departmental account. She'd go to the bank later. "Sir, why now? And why that date?" 

"Let's just say a little birdy told me." 

Simon walked off and Rhoda could swear she heard whistling. Adding in Simon's bet, the pot was approaching the twenty thousand dollar mark. Some days, like New Year's, (every year) had multiple bets on them. Her own money was on the day that strange Indian man had come to see Jim, as well as a few other random dates, but if Simon was throwing in his money this late in the game... Jim and Blair had a long way to go to retirement, until it was safe for them to tell everyone, and the number in her ledger just kept growing. With interest... no way was she letting Simon walk away with it all. Rhoda picked up a pencil and erased her name from under New Year's 1996 and wrote it in under April 25th. 

* * *

_One Year Later..._

"What is it?" 

"I don't know." Blair cut open the package and just blinked a few times. "It's a book." 

"I know it's a book, Sandburg. I can see that. Why is it in Russian?" 

Blair translated the title in his head and then translated it again, just to be sure. "Oh god." It had been so quiet. No wonder it had been so quiet. 

"What does it say?" 

"It says, _The Sentinel_ , by Sharon Sackville." 

"Shiva." Jim said the name like a curse. 

"Who else?" Blair touched the cover of the book. "But that's not the worst part. Sharon is Hebrew for plain. Blair is the Irish equivalent. She stole my name, Jim." 

"Lash fascinated her. To the point where she assumed the identity of random people she met. You were right. She was focused on you." Jim let his hand fall on Blair's shoulder. "But what you're really upset about is that she stole your story. This is your book." The book he'd tried to get published after the dissertation mess, to give a little truth to the lie he'd told. The book no one had wanted. 

Blair nodded, not knowing how else to say it. He'd have to read the damn thing to figure out if she'd lifted his manuscript. He lifted the book, intending to read the back cover, when he saw the sheaf of papers. He picked them up, read a page and scowled. "She kills all those people. She tortures us. She escapes. She steals my name. And then she steals my research!" He slammed the papers onto the desk. "Do you know what that is, Jim? That is a paper on the relationship between Sentinels and Guides." 

Jim stared at the papers for a long moment, and then he just couldn't help it. He burst out laughing. 

* * *

End Shiva by Nemesis: nemesis_07@juno.com  
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Disclaimer: _The Sentinel_ is owned etc. by Pet Fly, Inc. These pages and the stories on them are not meant to infringe on, nor are they endorsed by, Pet Fly, Inc. and Paramount. 


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